What a mixed bag. Now halfway through McCoy's era on my first ever watch-through, I feel I understand its vibe a little better than I had simply absorbing the 7th Doctor through other media.

This season continues to outdo McCoy's first season even when it stumbles. Though I can't even truly say whether Silver Nemesis is a stumble. I find myself asking: What does it all mean?

For example, our opening shot and a decent amount of the plotting involve a neo-Nazi group from South America pursuing this powerful weapon. But why Nazis? Two stories ago, we got a Nazi-lite far-right group getting mixed up with Daleks in a way that intentionally drew parallels between the two. Here, the Nazis seem to be nothing more than a recognizable, definable and evil faction included because we can reliably count on them to pursue the MacGuffin du jour and expect our heroes to oppose them, Indiana Jones-style. There are definite themes you can pull out of a Nazi/Cyberman crossover. This adventure very nearly does that in Episode 2, when the Nazi leader speaks of supermen and superiority. But I kept expecting and hoping it would amount to more.

Relatedly, there's a level of confusion that pervades this era. Maybe I'm not as media literate as I need to be to understand these plots better, but basically every 7 story to this point has left me asking, at multiple points, why characters are doing what they're doing. Why are things happening? Why are characters going where they're going? Saying things the way they're saying them? Taking a step back, the plots make sense from a distance. But actually watching them leaves me with the feeling that there are steps missing. This is mirrored in the geography of some scenes. The clunkiness of yelling out chess moves as the Doctor and Ace twirl around Cybermen is definitely something that looked good on paper and absolutely falls apart as it starts happening on screen.

All of this said, I do appreciate what this episode does well. The characters are fun and better defined than in some other McCoy serials. I love an episode where we hop between different times. It makes the Whoniverse, and the concept of time-travel, feel very alive and less like a device to drop our protagonists in Pompeii or wherever.

Other reviewers have pointed our that this adventure adds little to the mystery of who the Doctor is, and I would agree and add it seems to be mysterious for mystery's sake, which is always annoying. But it is interesting to me, someone who came to DW through NuWho, how well the dialogue here gels with the Timeless Child revelations.